What gives an amp it's character?

A bit heavy over breakfast but it really does make sense. Thanks.

I watch videos that have some pretty amazing sound deadening qualities using baffles in a more advanced version of the type used by Joe Bonamassa. The ones he uses on equipboard, have a link to a page and there is a more advanced version including a solid acrylic enclosure then a foam insert of some description and a lid. Admittedly to the ear it sounds disgusting but he has it miced so maybe that would preserve the sound that I like in a recording mode.

I think smaller amps respond better to close baffling, even close miced, but YMMV... I also think closed backs generally suck in tight spaces (like baffling) because a well made closed back needs space to 'bloom' for various acoustical reasons.... I will close mic a closed back to record, but only with a figure 8, Omni or a in a pair with a room mic to get the 'bloom' as the waveform develops out front.... open backs are another story due to leakage from the back and can work quite well in close spaces, but again, 40 to 50 watts max in my opinion

I don't think I have ever been happy with a closed back cab recorded in a space less than 4'x6' with pretty high ceilings

... You are like Yoda.

I just spoke to one neighbour this morning. He said... play whenever you want... however loud... if I hear you I might grab a beer and come over.

This option sounds cheaper. Now to win over the other 8. Downside to living in a cul-de-sac!

no no, I'm much taller than Yoda

I live in a townhouse on a cul de sac so I feel your pain.... and Americans are a lot more uptight than Australians. When I do want to play loud I need to see who's home and see if they mind that day. No shit, every time I wanna rip some noise I need to start from scratch and say hey to my neighbors! And sometimes they're like 'please don't!' As a result I generally don't play loud in the winter because my neighbors aren't bumming around in their yards where I can just shout over the fence while smoking.... that and people are cheerier in the summer... and drinking beer. Its an easier sell.

Fortunately there's a huge amount of road between me and the people across the 'street' so the sound doesn't reach them, so I just have to worry about the neighbors on either side and maybe the folks whose yard is behind me though they are pretty tolerant since they're a young couple who parties in their hot tub to all hours in the summer... I generally just ignore them unless they have guests already

but its a real pain in the ass to go above 15 watts with some master volume dialed down on the new ac30 or matchless because even 30 will inevitably slice through the fire walls like a hot knife through butter... when I got the 50 waters in last year as I got the delivery dates I made an effort to talk to all the neighbors about the fact that I had new toys coming and would be testing them at volume right away in case they were defective. I think I would be fine if I had a single home, but alas... I gotta tell you it would be nice to have more space inside too for my gear, but I can barely make time to keep my little house clean as is. Its really impractical for a family as small as mine to have a large single home... so rather than live in squalor with an unruly lawn I just take a hit on the loud music front even though it breaks my balls.

I hate that I walked away from that post with pity for your balls. Your small, green Yoda balls.

I recorded for nearly 4 years in the upstairs bedroom of the townhouse in the cul-de-sac. Gated communities that don't deserve the status of being gated are the worst. Having the guy drinking something cheap smelling in a ripped lawn chair on his driveway as you walk to the pool say "heard you playing music, man, sounds like you've got a lot of gear up there!" Really cuts into your swimming time.

I should count my current situation lucky.

you can disrespect my balls, but I would be careful what I said about Yoda's...

Yoda has no balls.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5096/5456037003_f1864185ff_b.jpg

Why do you have a Yoda sex doll Boom?

So I wont have to FORCE myself on the real one.

The dark side is easier...

I guess I'm just looking for love in Alderaan places. When I was younger, I was a regular moisture farmer.

OOOH, If I wasn't already a major part of a 17 page Star Wars/ music pun war last year (when I was seeing other forums) I would go for this.... I feel dirty reusing puns and they are all still too fresh.

dude, this is just sad.... now I got a go to the bar and get a Qui Gon Gin Martini

an excerpt: My rig is Most Impressive. I am running an Ibanez Star Destroyer through some Wampa effects and Boss Nass pedals into two Wedge cabs. I was looking for a Power Converter because it was a little on the Dark Side. Then I decided to Slave 1 cab to the other. The pedals make the Darklighter and the sound is BIGGS! And I topped it all with a noise gate. Like a Thousand Voices Cry Out and were Suddenly Silenced. Better than your Pitiful Little Band....

y'know, I've been batting around an amp design since you posted this, something in the 30 watt range but NOT ac30ish power amp sound and a really versatile but simple feature set that will allow the amp to have a number of different voicings

I drew some ideas from Matchless, Orange/Matamp, my oddball traynor and even a lil fender... the first thing is to use 4 6V6es biased in separate pairs with the ability to disable either pair on a switch. One pair will be cathode biased like a 15 watt tweed deluxe and the other pair will be fixed bias. At 30 watts you will get a blend of tweed/vox 'class A' sparkle and squish with the firmness of later class AB fixed bias designs and in half power you can choose one or the other. Also, it will give you the option to standby both pairs if I use individual switches and this will allow you to use only the preamp to drive another power amp or into a DI without loadboxing the power amp to prevent cooking it with no speakers attached. I'm also looking at dual rectifier slots so you can have a hugely firm response from a single GZ34 or tone it down and give it some squash with 1 or 2 smaller rectifier tubes... it also crossed my mind to try 2 dissimilar pairs of tubes with similar output in different bias cnfigurations. You can goose a solid 22 or so watts from 6V6es in fixed bias but only 15 to 18 in cathode bias, but in cathode bias the ampeg favorite 7591 produces a good 22 watts in a pair and is a true pentode with a more EL34 sound.... maybe that's the ticket, but its not what my rough schematic looks like right now as the 7591 is a more expensive tube than the 6V6 and I don't want to make something impractical. I will also have to give dissimilar tubes separate power supply lines, although using them in pairs immediately means I need separate lines, but in this instance I am looking at 2 independent designs whereas with all 6V6es run for 15 watts regardless of bias scheme I can build identical supply lines.... less work, less to go wrong in a prototype

I'm also looking at the great orange preamp/tone control circuit combined with the matchless ef86 circuit in back as a distortion stage/PI driver to create something with really versatile but minimal tone controls as well as some interesting gain staging options. I'm kinda debating a presence control as I wanna keep the knob count down, but want it to be flexible too. If I put in the bass voicing rotary, a bright switch, the baxandall tonestack, gain, a trim control on the output on the pentode driver and a post PI master for the whole amp then I am looking at a lot more knobs then I would usually want, but it'll give a lot of control over breakup character, voicing and loudness.... the presence seems over the top but its a control I've really warmed up to lately (not so well implemented on marshalls, but great on tweed, oranges and hiwatts and I know what makes it tick in those amps).

the schematic so far has an unused medium gain triode triode and I am considering maybe having a switchable cathode follower before the tome controls for a mode that's more marshally OR just adding a switchable extra gains tage to give a higher gain mode as the gain as designed will be on the very hot side of vintage, just JCM800, but juicier. with the extra triode implemented well it could give a meaner lead voicing where the driver pentode gets throttled by an extra cascade of gain, but not too itense since its not a full 12ax7 at 100, just like 60.

I'm not sure I have the chops to build a prototype myself though. I might schematic it and talk to a few more experienced builders for circuit refinement and a build.

maybe I need tos tart a Kickstarter.com project for this and all of you EB folks could donate to it and receive the 1st few production amps at cost (R&D will involve some trial and error with aprts swapped in and out of a prototype and then discarded.... values, brands, materials will need to be auditioned BY EAR right down to different wire gauges, styles and insulations and that's cost I cannot shoulder right now... plus I am speccing for a low noise toroidal power transformer -COST$$$!- and a partridge style 50 watt, but there's no center tap for tube rectifiers on a partridge type transformers and there's never been a production centertapped model so I will have to have Heyboer or Mercury make me some custom winds to audition by ear and that's a lot of money in prototyping)....

anyone interested in participating in a ground up new guitar amp design.... a stage/studio amp with one great, customizable channel and versatile poweramp? I admit I am not designing for a perfectly clean sound even at 1, there will always be a little audible distortion creeping in from the driver stage and pentode driver, but it'll do a rock n roll clean when tweaked right... I am not looking to design a jazzer or chicken picken special, that's been done so well already why bother? This will be a rock amp that can kill at various volume levels, produce a lot of different kinda 'feel (variable punch and compression at a wide range of volumes)', different textures, voicings for different guitars or even basses and tons of different drive sounds by changing the way you hit each stage of the amp.... a stage and studio swiss army knife without channel switching that will go from pedal friendly to guitar and cable just through tweaking. An amp that will wrk great on various stage sizes with differing acoustics and a different guitar and FX chain for different gigs and then knock down to studio levels or even bedroom practice level and still rock.

I also have a design for what I call a 'true tone attenuator cabinet' that will be an oversixed 2x12 with a smaller cab inside that will have an isolated 6" speaker with high handling that will soak half the wattage in a natural way. one input will be full power at 16ohms and the other will be half power at 8ohms so theoretically with the amp and cab together you could be getting power tube distortion with a scant 7 to 10 watts of output. Think that over.

Ambitious to say the least!

The question that springs to mind is why has this not been done before? Why have none of the amp giants built a dedicated unit that follows similar thought patterns? They have all tried their hands at amp modelling and nobody has been able to tie that down to a successful model.

There is a world of increased interest in the "bedroom volume" application, and the studio/ stage volume most certainly has more draw than the stadium volumes that we grew up with.

I can see that you have a firm grasp on the electronics side of the build. Having worked with electronics and technicians in the video game sector, reading this I became aware/ curious of how much heat something this diverse would generate. Even the sections that are running passive would be spilling off some warmth and the power draw feels like it would be asking for two power supplies.

There is another option that I will drop into the pot for consideration.

Why have we not seen an amp with a 4 x 12 cab bridged with a specifically designed selector box, that allows with a push of a button/ flick of a selector that allows the player to choose 1, 2, 3, or 4 speakers that automatically adjusts the amp impedence as well? Internally it connects to each of the four individual speakers and the section of the amp that controls the impedence (bypassing the dial/ switch on the back of the amp), allowing both the number of speakers and the impedence to be adjusted with a single switch... having the speaker selection and impedence selection wired together and matched into a part like a pickup selector switch on a guitar, so that you cannot accidentally switch one without the other.

Something like this would allow your amp to be bedroom, rehearsal, studio and stage keeping the integrity of your sound keeping you with an amp head you like giving you the tone you want.

In essence, you could market a 50w 4 x 12, that users could switch from 50w, to 37w, 25w, or 12w.

The real trick here is not to simply design the thing from the ground up, with a custom head and cab, but to design the Re-attenuator as a system that connects to an existing head and cab, so that people can buy and have the unit installed into their existing rig, (be it 4 or 2 speaker cabs) or comes as pre installed into a cabinet.

I may have just wasted thirty minutes typing the unattainable, but what is something attainable other than something that was previously out of reach?

Maybe think it over.

there's nothing fresh in this, just a fresh combination of different big name and boutique ideas... tube electronics, especially for guitar is a well rod road

how much heat? no more than your 800, probably less, the switching generates zero heat and can even switch it down to less by idling power tubes, the rest of the design is pretty standard in a heat/ current/voltage sense... an ac30 will go hotter given that all 4 tubes are cathode biased and in the case of my 62 the bias point is 'fry bacon' levels of current and voltage....

it sounds ore complicated than it is, videogames and tube amps are barely related

your queston about the flick of the switch cab? they exist.... to an extant, odd numbered speakers will blow a tube amp unless like the 3x10 bandmaster it is designed to do odd numbers above 1, but your amp is meant to go with a 250 to 300 watt stereo cab that can be used as a 4 ohm 4x12, 16 oh 4x12, pair od 8ohm 2x12s or individually as 8 ohm 2x12s (no need to use both)... I have owned many stereo marshall cabs and have used them as 2x12s to reduce projection at small shows though all halved 4x12s get boomy... you are not getting that reducing the number of speakers reduces the wattage HANDLING but not the output level in wattage or dB

.... there are nos tupid questions, but if there were some in amp world this would be one because its moot because you can disable speaker s left and right but the airspace in the cab has more to do with perceived projection and loudness than how many speakers are working... I think I explained this to you, but whatever... sometimes I feel like I'm not talking topeople... no offense, but I just feel this way with laymen... like what you want supersedes science just because you change a single unimportant variable, well, science is science... number do not lie, there are many things that are subjective in guitar amplification but power versus loudness within a few feet in equally efficient speaker systems with similar frequency responses is linear and set ins tone... I have to say it over and over that less speakers is not quieter, just less dispersion so it spreads less distance at a consistent volume, but also the air space behind said speakers also effects projection as well as tone and can be an issue in many regards... acoustics is a science separate from volts and amps with rules of its own and psychoacoustics plays into it too... its far more complicated than amplifier design

I always assumed you are a gear guy since you are not a muso...

not trying to be a dick but sometimes I talk to you and you say "why can't someone invent magic for me ?" and I'm like.... well, music is mathi it does what it does and you can understand or fumble blindly.... and electronic is math and you can calculate things or invent blindly and to no end misunderstanding spaces, the ear etc

I always assumed you are a gear guy since you are not a muso...

Nope. I am the third one.

The character of an amp, in terms of sound, is defined by a number of things, from circuitry to the wood of the cabinet.

I mean:

Is the cabinet's back open, closed, or partially closed? Is it birch or pine?

Does the amp have a tube rectifier, or a solid state rectifier? Or does it have both?

A number of things contribute to the sound of the amp and what makes it sound good or bad is up to the taste of each individual. There are no absolutes.

If you are talking about what the average guitar player can easily change about an amp to effect its sound, the first would be speakers. After speakers, if you have a valve amp, then it would be tubes. And among tubes, your PI and V1 tubes would make the biggest difference, although changing any tube will create a noticeable difference.

As for the Deluxe Reverb and pedals, I would say that it depends on the channel, because of its bright cap. They take pedals well, but its bright cap makes it not take pedals as well as some other Fenders like say a Princeton Reverb or Super Reverb. And that's why some players cut their bright caps, but cutting that, I caution, will also make the amp lose a ton of its character.

But you could have a Deluxe Reverb and change its speaker to a Greenback/Private Jack, to get a note of Vox to your sound. Actually, they sell a Navy Blue 65 Deluxe Reverb, stock, with a Celestion G12 Blue in it. And that would save you from the problem of trying to fit a Celestion speaker to a Fender amp, which, otherwise, isn't a straight forward alteration. Also, the Blonde, and Fudge Brownie, Deluxe Reverbs would give you a bit more growl than standard, at lower volumes, like a Celstion, because of the Alnico Jensens that come in those variations. But maybe that's not a good thing to you.

Talking about what we like or dislike about sound is kind of hard. So, generally (without speaking abstractly about sound), if I'm shopping for an amp, I start with these basic personal preferences:

1.) It has to be all tube, including that it has to have a tube rectifier.

2.) If it is made in a place that doesn't really have native musical styles with strong electric guitar traditions, then it had better be inexpensive as hell. But generally, I try to find one made somewhere with a rich history of guitar music. I'll pay through the nose for that.

3.) Attenuation and/or an effects loop would be pluses, but the lack of either or both is not a dealbreaker.

4.) I also like one that is good at low volumes, but is still an option for gigging.

As for online videos, the recording and/or player could suck. So, it kind of depends.

http://www.guitar-bass.net/workshop/rift-amp-modifications/

Kinda interesting this popped up. Wonder if there are eyes on the boards.....